TELLING THE STORY OF THE EARTH AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

The AMNH Hall of Planet Earth (HoPE) opened in June 1999, and we have had a decade to contemplate the elements of HoPE that make it a successful medium for communicating the modern science of the Earth, as follows. (1) To organize HoPE, the science was restructured. Rather than the systematic organization of a text book, we structured the content around five questions, e.g., “Why is Earth habitable?” The questions are not ones we ask each other as professionals; rather, we imagined them as ones we might discuss with erudite friends in drunken dinner conversation. (2) Many of us are geologists because we experience the wonder of nature by being in the field. That wonder was brought to the exhibit through large touchable samples and full-scale models of entire outcrops. Engaging the visitor’s tactile sense appeals to a wide audience. (3) The samples were chosen to tell the grand stories of how Earth works. For example, HoPE includes two sandstone boulders, mundane as rocks but profound in the sense that they formed in the same depositional basin and were collected at outcrops now separated by an ocean. Thus, they convey an insightful message about plate tectonics and further illustrate how samples constitute concrete evidence of abstract processes. (4) Models that are based on real data. For example, HoPE contains a one-meter bronze globe carved with global topographic and bathymetric digital satellite data. The exacting character of the piece invites exploration, particularly because it displays a large proportion of the planet - the seafloor - that is otherwise hidden. (5) A central element of HoPE is the Earth Bulletin, which includes a short HD video or story on recent scientific advances. The stories are chosen by museum scientific staff and rendered by dedicated, professional videographers. The stories are selected to illustrate how the planet operates as a dynamic, interactive system; they illustrate the passion, wonder, and excitement of discovery of the scientists involved by having them tell their own stories; and they weave together different approaches (e.g., field, lab, modeling) to study a single problem. This organization around questions, large-scale real objects, and models has made it the centerpiece for numerous informal and formal teacher education programs.